Yeah, that's the idea. However personnally I would link from the home page ("Inside the business" chronicles). It doesn't have to be a big link, could be in the footer for example. I don't have metrics for that but I think pages that are not linked from anywhere on your website might look a bit shady in Google's eyes.

By getting links to your articles you'd improve overall authority of your site (also important to link back to your homepage and other important pages in order to drive PR back, as you point out).

By improving your website's authority you'll rank better for your main keywords as well.